2024

La musica è vita

52 minutes

tv documentary

In New Orleans, music is part of everyday life and was born from the streets, thanks to the meeting of African, Caribbean and European emigrants who invented Jazz and Blues more than a century ago. It is a music that has crossed many borders and that in Switzerland has strongly impassioned producer Nicolas Gilliet and musician Frank Salis. Their friendship and shared passion are now about to materialize into a dream they have long cherished: the recording of an album with their idol James Andrews. James is a living legend of New Orleans, born and raised in its tradition.

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2023

Daniel Maillet: tutto si muove

52 minutes

tv documentary

Daniel Maillet, a Swiss painter and sculptor, is a tireless researcher. After living in Switzerland, Italy and Germany, at age 40 he moved with his wife to Brazil. There he began a new life, where he devoted himself in particular to terra cotta sculpture. After more than 20 years in Brazil, at 64 he decides to change his life once again. Energy and motivation seem not to be lacking. He moves to Italy, always accompanied by his wife, buys an old farmhouse where tries to relaunch his career.

LINK

2023

Nuda - Inside the Finzi Pasca Company’s show

64 minutes

feature documentary

Based on the play "Nuda" by Daniele Finzi Pasca, this audiovisual project combines the stage with the universe of cinema by mixing music, acrobatic gestures, images and storytelling.

Everything takes place during a dress rehearsal. We are immediately immersed in the company's world, with all its dreamlike and poetic power. Finzi Pasca's voiceover narrates his creative process and the strong inspiration drawn from his childhood. A hybrid work of documentary, theater and fiction.

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2023

Mission Asclepios - 65 minutes

tv documentary

A group of young space enthusiasts from all over the world decides to simulate a mission to the moon in the vast underground complex of Sasso San Gottardo, in Switzerland. An old military fortress which, with its long tunnels dug into the rock, recalls the lunar subsoil.

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2022

Gardi’s Play - 56 minutes

tv documentary

Clown Gardi Hutter is one of the best-known celebrities in Switzerland. On tour for 40 years with her clownish character Giovanna, she has made over 4,000 live performances. The documentary tells the past and the present of her long career, marked by great success, but also by ups and downs.

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2020

The Art of Survival - 55 minutes

tv documentary

Four survival enthusiasts from all over Switzerland talk about their need for self-sufficiency in a time of profound uncertainty and insecurity. Giovanni is an urban survivalist. To safeguard himself in a city context, thanks to his military knowledge, he has learned to deal with any type of emergency. Benno is a prepper. He believes that society has reached a breaking point and is preparing to face a possible crisis. His home is a self-sufficient refuge thought out down to the smallest detail. Kim is an archaeologist and explorer. He studied prehistoric knowledge and practices it in daily life with long nomadic stays in the woods. For him, today's society has lost its link with nature and the gestures of ancient peoples. Christof is a survival instructor. His school, SOS Survival Outdoor School founded 38 years ago, is the first of its kind in Switzerland.

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2019

Follemente Normale - 55 minutes

tv documentary

Gregorio has been confronted with bipolar disorder for over twenty years. When he experiences very strong emotions, he starts having crises that lead him from extreme excitement to deep depression. Due to the illness, he has been hospitalized 18 times and takes medication every day. 
But Gregory's life goes far beyond psychic distress. He loves to go out and to be among people. He plays volleyball. He loves to make jokes and has a sharp sense of humor.

LINK

2019

Il tempo delle famiglie: gli equilibristi - 55 minutes

tv documentary

For eight years, director Patrik Soergel has been following the evolution of three families in Switzerland. From pregnancy to birth, up to the first years of school, parents and children have told three different ways to live their daily lives. So far, two documentaries have been made, in 2011 and 2015.

This is the third chapter of the series. There are those who have changed homes, those who have separated, those who have decided to start a new life elsewhere. Small and big moments from ordinary life, told with intimacy by the protagonists we had already known.

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2019 + 2016 (2 editions)

Rigthting the wrong - 58 + 80 minutes

feature documentary

On May 23rd 2015, Monsignor Oscar Arnulfo Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador, was declared Blessed by the Catholic Church, 35 years after his assassination by death squads.
A historic event for Latin America and for the whole world. Romero is a universal figure that transcends the boundaries between believers and non-believers.

Why was he murdered? Why did the canonization process take so long?
The documentary, through the testimony of his closest collaborators and his personal assistant, traces Romero’s life from his childhood to his inner evolution, until the day of his sacrifice. With the background of a tiny country which could only count on coffee, sugar cane and cotton.

LINK

2018

Lido per sempre - 53 minutes

tv documentary

The Lido of Lugano, for about twenty years, has been the unchanged location where a group of over-80s meets weekly for lunch. Some are swimmers, some former swimmers, some simple visitors of the leisure and meeting facilities, adopted gradually to replace those who leave. This weekly tradition is the occasion, to weave the comments on current events and the memories of an almost legendary past, which stands out a bit confused and a bit precise to strengthen ancient bonds and new friendships. The appointment is forever, even if someone might be gone next week.

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2018

Le stagioni di Meret - 53 minutes

tv documentary

Her kitchen is first of all about taste. She searches the good taste, the good of the earth, the study of the closest and undervalued products,  the respect of the rhythm of the seasons and the deeper knowledge of the territory and its potential. Meret Bissegger until a few years ago ran a renowned restaurant - Ponte dei Cavalli in Cavigliano, 14 points on the Gault & Millau guide, known throughout Switzerland for its pioneering approach to organic and natural cuisine. But at the age of forty she felt the need to change and leave the traditional exercise of the profession to give space instead to courses, educational walks in search of edible wild herbs and catering.

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2017

Natural born videogamers - 55 minutes

tv documentary

Edoardo, Francisco and Sara are three young videogamers. They are part of a new generation that is no longer only playing videogames for fun. Playing videogames is their job. They are e-sports players and variety streamers. Their stories take us into a world little known to most adults over 30, that is instead a very lively reality with billions of dollars in turnover.

LINK

2017

Immerso - 56 minutes

tv documentary

Darkness, muted sounds, a breath that goes restrained and dosed to the last: it is the world of free-divers, the one explored by the documentary "Immerso". The story of the swiss free-diver Igor Liberti.

LINK

2016

Welcome to Losone - 65 minutes

tv documentary

A journey in and out of the federal center for asylum seekers San Giorgio in Losone (Switzerland), to understand how its presence is lived by both the population and the asylum seekers. Discovering the voices and thoughts that come or clash together around this structure, allows a reflection on the coexistence of different ways of perceiving the same reality.

LINK

2016

THE OTHER HALF OF THE SKY

STORIES OF CHINESE BUSINESSWOMEN - 80 + 52 minutes

feature documentary

They are four of the most successful businesswomen in China: Belonging to a generation who experienced the austerity of China's cultural revolution, followed by the subsequent economic boom, they have worked their way to the very top in a patriarchal society. Today, Yang Lan is the owner of one of the leading private media companies. Dong Mingzhu is a tenacious female CEO, heading up the world's largest manufacturer of air conditioning systems. Zhang Lan is a tycoon in the luxury restaurant business. Zhou Yi is a top manager working for a big american IT company. How were these careers built? What are the social and economic contexts in which they operate? And what do these women think about the political, social and cultural state of their country? The latest documentary film by Patrik Soergel takes an intense and unique look at the mentalities of female executives, and explores the huge transformation taking place in China today.

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2015

Il nido - 52 minutes

tv documentary

Four years after the documentary "the first breath" (primi respiri), Patrik Soergel goes back to the same families to tell how their lives developped as parents and children. A few years were enough to make many changes and transformations happen. Some are expecting their second child, some have moved to a new house or found a new job, some have experienced crisis or grief.

LINK

2014

When I'm grown up - 56 minutes

tv documentary

What will I do when I'm grown up? This is a question that all teenagers sooner or later arise about work and life.
And it is also the question at the center of this documentary. For an entire year Patrik Soergel has followed five Swiss teenegers: Samuel, Joel, Melanie, Giulia and Toussaint. Their stories have a common point: they all attend the same school. They approach the world of work through internships while at school they follow classes that deal mostly with identity, self-esteem and self-analysis.

LINK

2013

Fire and Ash: the crisis of the Church - 52 minutes

tv documentary

What are the reasons for the crisis of religion in the major Western confessions : Catholic and Protestant ? What are the people's questions that don't find answers ? Cardinal Martini once wrote that the flame of the Gospel message today lives as a thick ash under the embers and that he felt attacked by a sense of helplessness. And so, what is that ash and how to release the flame of love, the central Christian message ? What is the religious experience , what are the paths of soul searching ? Why some people are turning to Eastern traditions ? What is today the relationship between science and spirituality ? Guido Ferrari and Patrik Soergel have asked these and other questions to several authorities in the Christian world.

LINK

2013

The Mentalist - 52 minutes

tv documentary

Is it possible to read someone's mind, predict the future and move objects with the power of the mind? These are some of the extraordinary abilities that the young Swiss mentalist Federico Soldati performs. But who is the mentalist? A person with paranormal abilities? A magician with a strong sixth sense, or a scholar who applies sophisticated techniques of illusionism?

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2012

Another America - 50 minutes

tv documentary

Detroit was once the engine of America's automotive industry. Thanks to its triumph came the middle class. In the 50's Detroit was one of the richest cities in the world and had 2 million inhabitants. With the arrival of foreign competition and the outsourcing of jobs, Detroit's industrial hegemony collapsed generating unemployment and deterioration. Today the city is partly a ghost town in the brink of bankrupcy. The population has halved to about 700 thousand people. But not the whole city is abandoned: new businesses and initiatives are starting. Many individuals, from the ashes of the past, are looking for new ways to revive and reinvent the city.

LINK

2012

Le Nuove Famiglie (families in the move) - 45 minutes

tv documentary

In recent years the values of the european family have become more complex and delicate. Not because the concept of household is over, but because it is undergoinga radical change. Extended families or lone parents, these are some terms used to define the changes today. Different paths, at first very delicate, where each family member has to start from scratch, reinventing roles and attitudes. The documentary tells the stories of three unique families living in Switzerland, who agreed to share their achievements and their difficulties in finding balance and serenity.

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2011

Primi Respiri (the first breath) - 52 minutes

tv documentary

The stories of three young swiss couples expecting their first child. From late pregnancy until the first days following birth, the documentary follows three different ways of living this incredible human experience.

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2009

The Legacy of Silence - 52 minutes

tv documentary

Mattia Unal is a young Aramaean with Swiss nationality and the son of a Syriac Orthodox priest in the Aramaean community of Switzerland. From an early age, his identity has been shaped by the use of the Aramaic language and religion. Mattia’s awareness of his origins, however, is limited to what he has learned from his parents, who fled from their country to Switzerland in the early 1980s. Mattia and his father decidetherefore to go on a journey, visiting the land of their family: Tur Abdin, “Mountain of the Servants of God”. The Legacy of Silence offers a personal view of the lives of Aramaean people, in the Diaspora and in their homeland, in the present and the past, in both the younger and the older generations, creating an in depth picture of how an ethnic and religious minority in Turkey has lived and continues to live on today.

LINK

2009

The Sound After the Storm - 82 + 52 minutes

feature documentary

WINNER: best documentary @ Zürich international film festival 2009

Three years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is part ghost town and part third world country. Well known musicians Lillian Boutté, Dr. Michael White and photographer Armand “Sheik” Richardson use music as a philosophy and tool to save themselves and their abandoned, crumbling city. The Sound After the Storm tells a story in which this “music born of slavery” is reborn in response to Katrina’s devastation. Presented in 8 international film festivals.

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2003

No artificial anything - 62 + 52 minutes

documentary

Summer of 2001. Two young filmmakers travel through 5 states before and after the tragic events of september 11th 2001. They meet more than 20 americans from all kinds of backgrounds, getting a portrait of the USA in its most dramatic moment in history. Co-directed with Ryan Fenson-Hood (USA). Broadcast on Swiss tv. Presented at the 10th International Film Festival Visions du Réel (Nyon, Switzerland).

2001

Life, death, once more, Prague - 40 minutes

experimental documentary

A speechless film dedicated to Prague, a city with a long history of struggle, broken regimes and regeneration. The film follows the city like a symphony during various moments of daily life, from children to old people, to the dead.  

2001

Miro Romipen (My Romany Being) - 30 minutes

documentary

Patrik Conka is a 18 year old romany poet in search of his identity. Supported by FAMU. Broadcasts at Czech and swiss national TVs. Co-directed with Dalia Neis (UK). Winner of the 8th International artistic competition "Amico Rom" (Lanciano, Italy, third price as documantary).

2000

Music Box - 5 minutes

short film

How the fragmented memories and the sensations of two lovers evoke and form a crucial decision in their lives. Supported by FAMU film school, Prague.